Journey maps are used to chart the user experience with a product or service from start to end. Just as with geographical maps, journey maps can model discrete phases of interaction in great detail, or an entire end-to-end journey, with fewer details:

• Life-long engagement journeys are like small-scale maps, of say, a remote galaxy. The journey reflects the changing needs and priorities of customers as they mature, have families, and retire. Such maps are important to many organizations, from automotive, hospitality, construction, health care, banking, insurance, and more, because they model loyalty and attachment of the customer to the brand.

From an experience perspective, it is important to acknowledge the changing needs in a design that are consistent across the entire spectrum. For example, younger adults may prefer the experience of small, sporty, and inexpensive cars. When they have a family, they may prefer the convenience and safety of an SUV, a crossover, or a minivan. When much older, they might want a totally different type of car.

• End-to-end engagement journeys are like large-scale maps of, say, a large urban center walking tour guide. The journey captures engagement phases from awareness through to purchase, use, and repurchase.

The map in the following figure is an example of a large-scale map inspired by the visualization of subway systems, to illustrate the navigational complexity of a government health-care website. For websites and apps, such maps that don't provide much additional details are very effective. The site's experience is evident from the layout of the map and the various routes, and their stations correspond to navigation menus and pages.

Journey maps are composed of three primary elements:

• Persona: Takes the journey.
• Journey phase: Often, it means the sequential steps the persona goes through along the journey. The phases correspond to business milestones, such as a purchase, and sometimes also to a life event in a persona's life, such as marriage, birth of a child, and so on.
• Touchpoints : This is a point where the persona and product meet. This is the most critical element of the map. A touchpoint may involve a direct interaction with the product, or a secondary experience, such as a reference on social networks, in an article, or during a conversation.

The preceding figure is an example of journey map that illustrates five key phases common in commerce and service products:

1. Awareness: In this initial phase, the person is passive. The potential customer may not know about the product, sometimes even the entire product category. The person may have little interest in the product, but through interactions with various sources of information, such as social interactions and informational resources, the person becomes aware of the product, and, sometimes, of direct or indirect competitors. Depending on the product or service, the length of this phase may be measured in years.
2. Research: The person becomes active as a result of a need for the product. The need may be urgent or further in the future, but the prospective customer begins to take an active role in identifying the right product that best fits their need, preferences, and budget. The depth of research varies depending on the product and the context in which it will be used. Also, the time between conducting the research and acting on it to purchase varies greatly based on the person's circumstances.
3. Purchase: The trigger for purchase might be attributed to many factors--the purchase timing may be planned, the need for the product becomes suddenly urgent, a special offer made the purchase a good deal, and so on.
4. Use: Once the prospect becomes an actual user, there are various settings in which the product experience is put to the test.
5. Influence: The satisfied customer who finds the product useful and the experience good, and becomes a champion of the product, actively recommends it on their social networks and commerce sites.

Not all the phases apply, and sometimes, the lines between the activities are blurry. Still, it helps to have a model that captures the information in a compact and easy-to-understand way. When used as a central repository for managing the use experience, journey mapping provides several benefits:

• Planning: Journey maps help designers and stakeholders to look at the experience from different perspectives and prioritize on the area that needs to be focused on first. It is easier to be aware of and maintain consistency across similar touchpoints.
• Collaboration: Maps are visual and typically self-explanatory. Since design is an ongoing, iterative process, personas and journey maps evolve with the design, and reflect the most current data regarding the experience. The continuity creates an important resource--an organizational experience memory that leadership and stakeholders can easily understand and use as a strategic tool to guide decisions around priorities.
• Experience unification: Journey maps help a designer leader focus on constant monitoring, assessment, and improvement of the experience.
• Risk management: Maps make it easy to identify the source of known and, sometimes, hidden problem areas in the experience and address specific touchpoints. The problem may be related to experience inconsistencies across multiple, similar user scenarios, and solutions may require design or business process simplification efforts.
• Precision: Journey maps provide a method to model with precision, the growth, sustainability, and strength of relationships with users over time.